London contains well over 100 small museums, countless galleries, and an ever-changing selection of pop-up displays and exhibitions. Space does not allow any kind of comprehensive survey, so I’ve included the absolute must-sees, and a few personal favourites. Once you’ve been to a couple, visiting these smaller museums becomes addictive. They’re often much quieter than major venues, too.
The central areas of town conceal countless small galleries and cultural centres, far too numerous to list out in full. For starters, the streets around Cork Street in Mayfair are bejewelled with dozens of small commercial galleries, while Soho and Fitzrovia are no slouches either.
Sir John Soane’s Museum
13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields WC2A 3BP (Holborn)
Hunterian Museum
The Royal College of Surgeons, 35-43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2A 3PE (Holborn)
Most guidebooks rave about the Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, fêteing it as a ‘hidden gem’ and ‘off the beaten track’. It is neither of these things, just a two-minute walk from Holborn tube station, and situated in London’s largest square. However, the house museum is still worth a visit to see its unique displays of posh bric-a-brac: busts, balustrades, urns, paintings and pediments are all cluttered together in a kaleidoscope of antiquities. Even more startling, on the other side of the square, is the Hunterian Museum. This comprises the London collection of the Royal College of Surgeons, and contains many a grizzly exhibit – from diseased tissues to a giant’s skeleton. Kids will love it; parents will cower.
The Foundling Museum
40 Brunswick Square, WC1N 1AZ
(Russell Square)
From the Hunterian, it’s not too far to walk to the Foundling Museum in Bloomsbury. This small venue tells the story of Thomas Coram’s remarkable home for abandoned children, which occupied this site until well into the 20th century. That tale is interesting enough, but the Foundling Hospital also had impressive sponsors, including Handel and Hogarth. Both are represented in the museum’s permanent displays, and there’s a rolling programme of temporary exhibitions. Good café, too. Once you’re done, be sure to head through the brutalist Brunswick Centre to Marchmont Street, where you’ll find a trail of foundling tokens (mementos left by mothers, alongside their babies so they might one day reclaim them) embedded in the pavement.
New London Architecture
The Building Centre, 26 Store Street, WC1E 7BT
(Goodge Street)
One small museum-cum-gallery that deserves to be much better known is the somewhat awkwardly named New London Architecture just off Tottenham Court Road. This is a useful place to visit if you’re fairly new to town. Why? Because the centrepiece is an enormous three-dimensional map of London, recently updated so that it now stretches from Earl’s Court in the west to the Royal Docks in the east. Other than commandeering a helicopter, there’s no better way to get a feel for the geography of London, as well as learning more about upcoming plans for new buildings in the capital. (There’s also an hilarious tradition of placing unlikely figurines such as dinosaurs and giant robots on the map – I presume it’s students from nearby UCL.)
Gagosian Gallery
6–24 Britannia Street, WC1X 9JD (King’s Cross St Pancras)
This wealthy space looks like it’s going to be tiny, but opens up inside to show off big-name temporary exhibitions. The place was packed to the gunwales with Picassos a few years ago, for example.
West London is not always appreciated as a cultural centre. This is to do it a disservice, for the region is particularly good for local museums. Sadly, both the Gunnersbury Park Museum (Hounslow) and Pitzhanger Manor House and Gallery (Ealing) are closed for major renovation, and will not be open until 2016 and 2018 respectively. Both may safely be added to this list thereafter.
Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising
2 Colville Mews, W11 2AR (Notting Hill Gate or Ladbroke Grove)
Notting Hill is home to what, on the face of it, sounds like an unpromising offering. The Museum of Brands is, however, a delight for nostalgists. It displays decades’ worth of packages from thousands of familiar products. You’ll come out whistling the song from the Ovaltine or Kia-Ora adverts, depending on your age.
Boston Manor House
Boston Manor Road, TW8 9JX (Boston Manor or Brentford)
A manor house has stood on this site for the best part of 1,000 years, but the current house-museum is from the 17th century. This former Jacobite mansion contains a series of period rooms, and a unique staircase. Look out for the painted angel above the fireplace in the Drawing Room; she bears a striking (if coincidental) likeness to Margaret Thatcher. The stately gardens slope down to the River Brent, where you can pick up the river walk mentioned in the 8am chapter (see here).
12 Holland Park Road, W14 8LZ (High Street Kensington)
Perhaps more of a gallery than museum, this house was formerly the home of Lord Leighton, one of the 19th century’s most famous British painters. Many of his canvases and sculptures can be found here, but it is the unforgettable Middle Eastern fantasy of the Arab Hall that will stay with you the longest – all mosaics and Islamic tile designs. Its every crevice is embellished with some noble ornament, gilt carving or intricate tile pattern.
Gloucester Road Tube Station
(Gloucester Road, obviously)
Not a lot of people know this, but Gloucester Road is the capital’s most-visited gallery, with some 14 million entries and exits each year. Most of these visitors are, of course, catching trains, but while they do so, they might care to glance at the station’s row of blind arches on the disused platform. Since the turn of the Millennium these have served as niches for striking pieces of art. Installations along this wall have included a 7m (23ft) high panda’s head, a pile of mattresses, English landscapes and a giant A-Z.
The south is as culturally rich as any other quarter, and perhaps more diversely so, with everything from a fan museum (Greenwich) to a museum of sewing machines (Tooting Bec). Sadly, one of the south’s true cultural gems, the Cuming Museum at Walworth, was badly damaged by fire in 2013. If it ever reopens, consider it worthy of a place in the following list of some of the area’s stronger attractions.
Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret
9a St Thomas Street, SE1 9RY (London Bridge)
This remarkable museum can be found at the top of a church tower in London Bridge. The space was used as a training theatre for surgeons at nearby Guy’s Hospital, but was then boarded up and only rediscovered a few decades ago. The museum is particularly geared up for family visits, if you can get nervous little ones past the grinning skull above the museum entrance.
Surrey Docks City Farm
Rotherhithe Street, SE16 5ET (Surrey Quays)
London contains many city farms, including notable examples at Spitalfields, Kentish Town, Vauxhall and Mudchute on the Isle of Dogs. My favourite is Surrey Quays Farm. It is sited just off the Thames path opposite Canary Wharf and seems to spill out on to the riverside (via plaques and displays, not escapee animals). Inside, kids of all ages can enjoy mingling with pigs, goats, cattle and other beasts. Mummy and daddy, meanwhile, can enjoy a quiet cuppa in the friendly café.
Horniman Museum
100 London Road, SE23 3PQ (Forest Hill Overground)
It seems somewhat inadequate to include the Horniman Museum in a section of smaller museums and galleries. This wonderful institution is fairly large and contains much-loved collections on natural history, musical instruments and ethnic costume. The museum’s mascot is a malproportioned walrus, poorly stuffed in the Victorian age but still holding his ground in the natural-history section. The sundial trail in the gardens is a heap of fun, and offers surprising views of London from this hilly location.
Bold Tendencies
Levels 7–10, Peckham Multi-storey Car Park, 95a Rye Lane, SE15 4TG (Peckham Rye) Note: summer months only.
South London’s oddest art gallery can be found occupying the top floors of an old multi-storey car park. The route to the top is haphazardly signposted, and can feel a little intimidating if you’re not entirely confident that you’re in the right place. Persevere, though, and you’ll gain an experience you’ll never forget. Sculptural art, of varying quality, is strewn across the decks. The rooftop commands spectacular views looking north to central London, and includes a popular Campari bar called Frank’s, which can become exceptionally busy on warm summer nights.
The east is, these days, a world-famous centre of art and fashion, with dozens of galleries clustering in Shoreditch, Hackney, Bow and particularly the canal-side enclave of Vyner Street (although there are signs that this may be on the wane). For every permanent gallery, there’s probably another three or four temporary ‘pop-ups’ colonising abandoned shops and other properties. Last year, for example, one artist took over an old corner shop and stocked it entirely with hand-made felt versions of popular foodstuffs. The First Thursdays initiative is a good way to explore this bewildering scene. As the name suggests, it takes place on the first Thursday of every month, when galleries across east London open late, often with refreshments. Otherwise, here are a few excellent places to start, including a few small museums.
Dennis Severs’ House
18 Folgate Street, E1 6BX (Liverpool Street)
The spirit of the old East London is most successfully evoked at Dennis Severs’ House in Spitalfields. This old silk-weaver’s home is a time capsule, re-creating bygone days in decor and drama. The series of rooms, all in different styles, was slowly pieced together in the 1980s by the eponymous Severs, a Californian who settled in Spitalfields when the place was depressed and run-down. Following his death in 1999, the home became a living memorial both to the man, and to the domestic history that so fascinated him. The performance-led tours are best experienced by winter candlelight.
Sutton House
2–4 Homerton High Street, E9 6JQ (Hackney Central or Homerton)
This red-brick manor house is reckoned to be the oldest residential building in the borough of Hackney, dating back to Tudor times. It’s now managed by the National Trust, and gives visitors a glimpse into the home life of wealthy 16th century Londoners. In a peculiar juxtaposition, you’ll also get a taste of a 1980s squat: during that decade, the house had fallen into disrepair, and was used as a kind of impromptu community centre. A graffitied wall has been retained.
136 Kingsland Road, E2 8EA (Hoxton)
The Geffrye Museum runs from a series of quaint Grade I-listed almshouses next to Hoxton station. It tells the story of home interiors through the centuries via a sequence of chronological rooms. The effect is particularly charming during the Christmas season, when each room is given period decoration. The museum is about to undertake a major new development that will create 40 per cent more space, including a new café in a formerly derelict pub (saved from demolition after much public lobbying).
Howard Griffin Gallery
189 Shoreditch High Street, E1 6HU (Shoreditch High Street)
Pure Evil Gallery
108 Leonard Street, EC2A 4XS (Old Street)
The east is also well known for its street art scene, and several small galleries have sprung up to turn this once-edgy artform into something potentially quite lucrative. The Howard Griffin Gallery is one such example, set up by the eponymous owner after his passion for running street art tours spilled over into mounting exhibitions. The Pure Evil gallery nearby, meanwhile, is curated by the artist of that name, whose vampiric animals are still a common sight around London.
North London is often stereotyped as the land of left-wing, Guardian-reading bookish types. Playing up to that image, my selection of recommended cultural centres is of a somewhat intellectual bent.
Freud Museum
20 Maresfield Gardens, NW3 5SX (Finchley Road)
This house museum presents the history of the great psychoanalyst in his former home, including his extensive collection of antiquities, which might be considered as a miniature rival to the John Soane’s Museum. Here you’ll also find Freud’s study and the famous psychoanalytic couch, one of the most iconic items of furniture in the world (and off-world, for a replica even appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation). Look out for the seated statue of Freud, one of the finest bronzes in London, a little down the hill on Fitzjohn’s Avenue. Meanwhile, nearby Camden Arts Centre (Arkwright Road, NW3 6DG) has an ever-changing range of contemporary art and a rather nice garden-café to enjoy.
The Jewish Museum
129–131 Albert Street, NW1 7NB (Camden Town)
This Camden Town venue tells the history of Judaism in Britain, alongside displays on ceremonial art and the Holocaust. Housed in an anonymous-looking Victorian terraced house, the museum sparkles on the inside, following a refit at the start of the decade.
Zabludowicz Collection
176 Prince of Wales Road, NW5 3PT
(Chalk Farm or Kentish Town West)
About a mile away from the Jewish Museum, the Zabludowicz Collection nestles behind a weighty Corinthian portico – a former Methodist chapel – so wonderfully alien to both the surrounding terraces and the often-challenging contemporary art inside. It’s worth a visit for the architecture, even if the exhibitions don’t suit your tastes. It has sister galleries in New York and, unusually, on a Finnish island.
William Morris Gallery
Lloyd Park House, 531 Forest Road, E17 4PP
(Walthamstow Central)
Morris is one of those rare Londoners whose life spawned more than one museum or gallery. Indeed, I’m pretty sure he has more London cultural centres than any other subject, with further properties in Bexleyheath (east), Merton (south) and Hammersmith (west). The northern compass point of Walthamstow boasts his family home for eight years, now converted into a museum of his life, designs and collaborators. Walthamstow in general now enjoys a thriving arts scene, with numerous galleries dotted throughout the area. Look out for the annual Walthamstow Arts Trail, when these small spaces are linked together and supplemented by pop-up galleries in pubs and halls.
AT THIS HOUR:
St James’s Park has been home to a colony of pelicans since the 17th century. The big-beaked birds get a late lunch every day at 2.30pm. Simply pop along to the eastern end of the park and watch as they’re dealt a fish supper.